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5MORIAL SERMONS 




llELKlO'iJS S90ETY OF 



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i LIBRARY OF CONGRESsJ 

I Chap. S..H4. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



MEMORIAL SERMONS 

IN RECOGNITION OF THE 

Two Hundred and Fiftieth 
Anniversary 



OF THE FOUNDING OK THE 



fit^t titliQwu^ ^octctp in lltorburp. 



BY THE MINISTER, 



Rev. JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS. 
March 26, 1882. April 2, 1882. 



BOSTON; 

PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY 

BY GEO. H. ELLIS. 

1882. 



SERVICES UPON THE FIRST SUNDAY 



March 26, dS82. 



ORGAN VOLUNTARY. 

ANTHEM. 

READING OF SCRIPTURE. 

PS.\LM 105. 
As used in 1630. Cambkiuge Tune, from Playfuid's Psalil 




Give praises unto God the Lord, 
And call upon his name ; 

Among the people eke declare 
His worlcs to spread his fame. 



And of the heathen men he gave, 
To them the fruitful lands, 

The labor of the people eke 
They took into their hands. 



He brought his people forthwith mirth. That they his holy statutes might 
And his elect with joy Observe forevermore. 

Out of the cruel land where they And faithfully obey his laws. 

Had lived in great annoy. Praise ye the Lord therefor. 



Psalm 107. 

From Biiy Ps.ilin Buok, 1G40. Tune; "Dundee. 

O give yee thanks unto the Lord, 

because that good is hee : 
because his loving kindness lasts 

to perpetuitee 



r th desart in a desart way 
they wandred : no towne finde, 

to dwell in. Hungry & thirsty : 
their soule within them pinde. 



So let the Lord's redeem'd say : whom Then did they to Jehovah cry 

hee freed from th' enemies hands : when they were in distresse : 

and gathred them from East & West, who did them set at liberty 

from .South & Northerne lands out of their anguishes 



6 SE/'; VICES. 

In such a way that was most right O that men would Jehovah prayse 

he led them forth also : for his great goodness then : 

that to a city which they might & for his workings wonderful! 

inhabit they might go. unto the sonnes of men. 



AIJDKESS, 
By Tilt Minister, Rev. J. (',. Bkooks. 



In peril here our Fathers stood : 
Around them was the solitude 
Of the deep forest, casting down 
The glory of its summer crown. 

Borne on the faith that dar'd the sea, 
Their hearts went up, O God, to thee : 
That temple with its arch of sky 
Rung with their grateful melody. 

In peace and plenty here we staiitl, — 
The chiklren of that suffering band. 
They sow'd in tears : the harvest waves 
In joyful bounty 'round their graves. 

And have our^hearts no thanks to raise ? 
God of oiw Fathers, may our praise 
Be ceaseless as thy love : oh, give 
That spirit that shall make us live. 

In joy and woe, through youth and age, 
More worthy of our heritage; 
And, wlien these forms have long been dust, 
Be Thou our children's c' ildren's trust. 



BENEDICTION. 



FIRST SERMON, MARCH 26. 



" I judged it an act of impiety to see the renown of sliining acts and 
useful sentiments go down into oljjivion." 

These words of Theodoret, a kind of Church 
Father of the fourth century, were used by Cotton 
Mather as a text for a portion of our church history. 
They may as fitly be used to-day for the two centu- 
ries that followed Eliot's brave beginnings. 

If it is an impiety to forget the achievements of 
true men in the past, it is no less a virtue to ren- jm- 
ber and celebrate them. We are born out of the 
past and owe to it every treasure that we possess, yet 
without remorse easily forget it. The past remains 
with us to warn, instruct, inspire only when we turn 
reverently toward her, resolved to keep all her glories 
in grateful recognition. Monuments must be built, 
old landmarks must be preserved at a cost from 
which the present often shrinks. Especially must 
institutions like the Church keep alive and fresh all 
that has been best in the past, or they will pay 
dearly for the neglect. When we cut ourselves off 
from the past, even by forgetfulness, we lose for 
it that veneration which is the inspiration of our 



8 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

highest service even to the present. We here are 
happy in having a history which needs only to be 
known to kindle in us something both of enthu- 
siasm and of gratitude. 

A question of date first meets us. Upon the 
gallery is written 1631. This has been thought 
by some to be an error. The date is not, I think, 
necessarily wrong. The question depends upon the 
meaning which is attached to the term " founding of 
a church." If the calling of the first minister founds 
the church, the date should be 1632 ; for it will soon 
be two hundred and fifty years since Mr. Thomas 
Welde was settled as the first pastor. This in 
Christian history has not, however, been considered 
as the beginning of the Church. The Church has 
had its beginning in the first gathering of the 
people to discuss their plans and hopes. Is it 
probable that the people here, while they were 
yet going to Dorchester to worship, met for such 
purpose .'' It seems to me almost certain that they 
did thus meet; but, as we have no record of the 
fact, we have our memorial service upon the anni- 
versary of an assured date, 1632, when Mr. Welde 
became the first minister Let it not be understood, 
however, that this in any way impairs the veracity 
of the words "gathered in 1631." 

There is much personal and family history that 
has made the past of this society so honorable, 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 9 

which we must pass in silence. Direct descendants 
of the first three ministers are still among our wor- 
shippers. There are names among the officers of 
the church, Alcock, Heath, Bowles and others, many 
names of laymen, whose record adds to our faith 
in man and in the religious ends for which they 
sacrificed so much. There are names of women, 
from the wife of Eliot to those whom many of you 
delight to remember, like Miss Caroline Porter's and 
Miss Amory Lowell's, whose influence is still a min- 
istering power in our midst, pure and strong. Nor 
can I let the occasion pass without a word of earnest 
and willing tribute to Mr. Adams Ayer. For many 
years, his service to this church, and especially to the 
Sunday-school, was given so generously and with 
such unfailing kindliness of spirit as to claim from 
us all sincere and lasting gratitude. From earliest 
days there is indeed most ample record of virtues 
that should be vividly retold to each generation. 

There is a power over us of such ancestry which 
we have not in America learned to prize at its true 
value. To know any prominent characteristic virtue 
of those from whom we spring is not only to be 
influenced by it: it is to be put under an obligation to 
renew that virtue and to keep it alive. 

Mediaeval knights learned by heart the records of 
past heroism in their house, that they might sustain 
still its fame for prowess. So we, by holding com- 



10 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

munion with the worthier deeds of our forefathers, 
are put upon our honor to sustain still all that nobly 
distinguished them. 

Upon this and the following Sunday, I shall 
attempt little except to bring before you the previous 
ministries over this church: this morning, recalling 
that of Mr. Welde and of Mr. Eliot; upon next 
Sunday, together with a notice of the succeeding 
pastors, I shall add, especially for the sake of the 
younger of my hearers, some characteristics of the 
age, — the various church buildings, the earlier forms 
of worship, and such incidental history as may best 
help us to realize those first noble beginnings which 
it would indeed be an impiety to let " pass down into 
oblivion." 

Necessarily we must dwell longest upon three or 
four of the names. In a considerable succession of 
public servants in any sphere, those who signally 
illustrate the liigher virtues must be exceptional; but, 
as I have read the stories of these lives, and through 
them largely the history of this church, it has been 
with a growing reverence for them and for the value 
of their work in this community. It is an open 
page from Welde to Putnam. For Dr. Putnam's 
ministry one need not turn to any faded folios. He 
is as a living presence among you still. To your 
hearts he still speaks graciously and persuasively as 
of old. It is a blessed quality of our nature that it 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. \\ 

can, in spite of death, retain the companionship of 
such a life. It will soon be seven ysars since I first 
met him in the vestry and came with him into the 
pulpit, since when I have not ceased to read in living 
and grateful memories the story of his influence. 

Of the first minister comparatively little is known 
except of a public character. Speaking and writing, 
he was ever before the public, absorbed in the great 
questions of the day. According to a letter commu- 
nicated to a recent number of the Register of the 
Historical Society, "he received in 1613 his degree 
at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, and five 
years later his degree of M.A." He was for some 
time minister in Essex; "but, not submitting to the 
ceremonies, the place was too hot for him, and he 
was forced to quit it and go over to New England." 
Five years after his coming here, he is distinguished 
among the leading opponents of Mrs. Hutchinson. 
Two years later, in 1639, he assisted Mr. Eliot and 
Mr. Mather of Dorchester in preparing the Bay 
Psalm Book. 

We see from Winthrop's Journal that Mr. Welde's 
advice in all matters of public concern was valued. 
The records of the colony testify to the same con- 
fidence. They contain this entry, June 2, 1641 : 
"The Court doth entreat leave of the church of 
Salem for Mr. Peters, of the church of Roxbury for 
Mr. Welde, and of the church of Boston for Mr. 



12 MEMORIAL SERMONS- 

Hibbens, to go to England upon some weighty occa- 
sions for the good of the country." Mr. Welde 
went not to return. 

If we would see him truly, we have first to look- 
away from the man to the religious and political 
movements amid which he acted. Wherever we 
see him, he represents that characteristic of the 
Puritans which has had cast upon it so much blame : 
he seems to have been consistent in his passionate 
hostility to all religious o^jinions which differed from 
his own. Before leaving England for America, he 
had already spoken hotly against Laud's religious 
tyranny; had shown indeed there the selfsame spirit 
that he showed here. In England he could not 
conform to the established order of worship, but 
spoke out so bravely as to imperil his liberty if 
not his life. Once here, he tnrns against those 
who cherish another faith with the same strength 
of feeling. In England he was a heretic, and suf- 
fered for it; here he did what he could to make 
those suffer whom he considered heretics. 

Strength characterizes him, — strength of mind, 
strength of prejudice, strength of religious opinion. 
From the writings which he has left, it appears that 
his chief interest is the preservation of certain right 
opinions in religion. In their defence he uses a 
diction which reminds us of the Pope's anathemas. 
Anne Hutchinson he pursued with pitiless spirit. 



MEMORIAL SERMOA'S. 13 

He had no small part in her banishment, although 
her spirit and her life were beautiful with that gen- 
tleness which the church that cast her out so sadly 
needed. As opposed to those who believed in the 
"law" in religion, Mrs. Hutchinson believed in the 
free dwelling of God's grace in the human soul. 
The First Church in Boston with its minister she 
almost completely won over to her faith ; but action 
so vigorous was taken by other churches that the 
" law " triumphed and she was banished, not however 
until she had spent several months in Roxbury, 
where she was visited by Mr. Welde, who hoped 
still to reclaim her, but hoped in vain. 

Although Mr. Welde showed toward the Quakers, 
Jews, Anabaptists, the same bitterness of feeling as 
toward Mrs. Hutchinson and her party, I have 
introduced her truly saintly life, firstly, because light 
is thus thrown upon the strong traits of character 
which we find in Mr. Welde ; secondly, because of 
the blame that has been laid at his door. 

This feeling against our first minister is the same 
in kind as that which has shown itself in greater or 
less intensity of criticism against the Puritans. Mr. 
Welde was Puritan of the Puritans, and made their 
cause passionately his own. A question with which 
the last generation especially has made us familiar 
best expresses this spirit against the Puritans, — 
"What are we to think of men who fied from 



14 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

religious bigotry in England to show here the same 
inhuman temper as that from which they fled?" 

The simplest historical facts are quite enough to 
meet the difificulty. Such a question as the above 
assumes the existence at that time of a spirit which 
had not yet been born into the world. Here and 
there, an exceptional man or woman rose to a full 
appreciation of religious freedom; but this was not 
true of any existing community. When we blame 
Mr. Welde for his part in worrying Mrs. Hutchinson 
and her party out of their homes here, we judge 
from that principle of almost universal toleration 
which has at last been born for all our people. 
The principle is, however, a new possession. For 
Mr. Welde or for the Puritans, no such principle 
existed. Such a thought of religious toleration was 
as far off in the future as the thought of universal 
suffrage. Do we blame them that they did nut 
allow an unrestricted franchise .'' Religious tolera- 
tion existed only here and there in an uncommon 
spirit. By the general body of society, it was as 
yet undreamed of. But it is said they insisted 
upon their right to think and worship freely in 
England, yet would accord no such privilege to 
Roger Williams and others here. This is an error. 
The Puritans did not come here for the purpose of 
being intellectually free or leaving to others such 
freedom. They came for the sake of certain uf 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 15 

their own very precious and very definite beliefs. 
They came not for any universal freedom, as is so 
often said, but for freedom to think, to express, to 
realize those special ideas ; and it should be remem- 
bered that they did not ask in England entire 
freedom in religious opinion, but only to be free 
from a few unbearable interdicts under which they 
suffered. 

We may regret that they had not advanced far 
enough to be more perfect than they were. They 
had the limitations of their age, as we have of ours. 
It is but fair, however, to remember that they neither 
asked nor allowed anything like perfect freedom in 
religion. Their object was widely different from 
our own. They are often criticised as if they came 
to found a democracy where all should be equal. 
They had no such thought. They came to found 
a theocracy and a government based upon very 
clearly defined religious ideas that were dearer to 
them than freedom, or equality, or life. 

One historical fact will greatly help us to a more 
generous and to a truer understanding of those 
traits in the Puritan character which Mr. Welde 
illustrated, namely, that the Puritans took for 
themselves Pym's doctrine in England, which was 
this: that it is the duty of legislators to establish 
the true religion and to punish the false. 

It was this question of a true religion as they 



1 6 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

understood it, and of establishing it in the face of 
all enemies, before which all other interests paled. 
They did not wish ill to the Quakers so much as 
they wished them out of their way, that they might 
more easily realize their idea of a state based upon 
religion. The Quakers held not only religious but 
social and political views abhorrent to the Puritans. 
Indeed, it is doubtful if the Puritan idea could have 
succeeded, if it had been so changed as to admit 
the projects of the Quakers, who wholly refused to 
recognize the laws, the social and political principles, 
dearest to the Puritans. 

We may easily see how far they were from any 
conception of freedom, as we understand it. A peti- 
tion was sent to the magistrates in 1646 for a very 
slight extension of the franchise. The petitioners 
were thrown into prison. Cotton, the great leader 
both in political and religious thought, spoke most 
bitterly against democracy. Some among them 
claimed too much for commerce, and John Higgin- 
son wrote, " This is never to be forgotten : that our 
New England is originally a plantation of religion, 
and not a plantation of trade ; and if any man 
among us make religion as twelve, and trade as 
thirteen, let such man know that he has neither the 
spirit of a true New England man nor yet of a 
sincere Christian." 

Puritan opinion had developed thus far. Why 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 17 

should we expect these men, only by crossing the 
ocean, to change their nature, — in the course of a 
few months to advance a century? 

Those of the type of Roger Williams and Mrs. 
Hutchinson were, it is true, far less bound by tradi- 
tion; but Church and State were then absolutely 
one, and not elastic enough to admit all kinds of 
opinions and vagaries. Rhode Island became an 
asylum for them. They had opportunity there to 
realize their ideal. What did they realize? In 
education, in social progress, — yes, in real liberty, 
they realized nothing that can be favorably compared 
with the results of the Puritan idea as it developed 
in Massachusetts, controlled as it was by our so- 
called bigoted forefathers. English history has been 
a slow growth, and it can be truly said of the Puri- 
tans that in coming here they took a long step in 
advance. 

Is it not a little like intolerance in us to ask of 
them more than this ? Can we free ourselves from 
our time, from its prejudices and limitations, and 
pass at a bound into the next age with its unborn 
freedom and light? 

We both live and allow a larger freedom than did 
the last generation. In this, we obey the law of 
historical progress. Our forefathers did no less. 
They advanced in opinion far beyond that which 
they had left in England. They exercised here a 



1 8 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

far wider toleration than that to which they had been 
educated in their old home, and history will some 
time acknowledge that they could not do more and 
remain men. We may measure their readiness to 
adopt more generous opinions, even by that most 
terrible of questions, the witch-burning. 

Our feeling, as we look back upon that tragedy, is 
changed, when we realize that it was the wisest and 
most respected judgment of the time that witches 
existed. The greatest lawyers of the time believed 
it. By all existing law, — the mediaeval and the 
church laws, — witchcraft was condemned. The 
penalty was death. Many years after our last witch 
was burned, Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries 
these words, — 

" To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of 
witchcraft and sorcery is flatly to contradict the 
revealed word of God ; and the thing itself is a 
truth to which every nation in the world hath in 
its turn borne testimony." 

What must we expect of those who — two genera- 
tions before these CommenBaries were written — sat 
in legal judgment upon those who insisted themselves 
that they were witches.'* Could they do other than 
interpret and apply the law.'' Law moves on slowly 
from precedent to precedent. They who judge of 
tabulated crimes must appeal to precedent. Cotton 
Mather gives a lonir list of legal authorities which 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 19 

judges consulted in an age when such humane spirits 
as Baxter and Sir Thomas Brown believed in witches. 

It was a period of strange and unnatural frenzy. 
In the islands from which our law came, thirty thou- 
sand supposed witches had been condemned to death. 
In Scotland alone, within a period of ten years, four 
thousand fell. French authorities have recorded 
more than seventy thousand, Germany a far greater 
number still. That same mania fell upon us here, 
when to be a witch was to be a criminal worthy of 
death. Our judges, as they passed sentence, had one 
legal duty; namely, to turn back to the great authori- 
ties. Yet how grandly they rose above that weight 
of custom ! We, remembering the hosts that had 
suffered in the most civilized parts of Europe, may 
ask. How many suffered in our State.'' Nineteen! 
In spite of all the law in Europe, in spite of their 
faith in the existence of witchcraft, they so soon, and 
with so few victims, rose to a brave confession of 
their error, and to the practice of a humanity which 
no vested dignity of opinion should longer restrain. 

This darker moment in our New England history 
was long after the death of our first minister. I have 
however introduced it, because that period, with its 
difficulties of faith and ojainion, helps us to under- 
stand the individual. If, as Mr. Welde did, he 
represent the sterner and more conservative spirit 
of the Puritans, we shall not wholly free them from 



20 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

blame. Mr. Welde had the faults of his own qual- 
ities. We, however, do no graver injustice to the 
Puritans; nor can we in any way more fatally convict 
ourselves of the very fault that we censure in them 
than by speaking of them as if they were informed 
by the spirit of an age that came more than a cen- 
tury after their day. 

In November, but five months after Mr. Welde's 
settlement, came John Eliot to Roxbury. He 
became an associate minister with Welde, under 
the name of teacher, although their duties must 
have been the same. He, too, was born in Essex, 
England, and was educated at Cambridge. 

Essex, especially the little town of Nazing, where 
Eliot was born, sent out many whose descendants 
still live among us. Upon the records of the Nazing 
church stand seven familiar names, among which 
are Heath, Eliot, Graves, Ruggles, and Curtis. 
Eliot taught for a time, after leaving the University, 
in the family of Thomas Hooker. He sailed for 
America in November, 1631, and was at once wel- 
comed by the First Church in Boston, where he 
labored in the absence of the pastor, Mr. Wilson, 
until he came here. They were eager to keep him 
at the First Church; but, for reasons that may be 
seen in our Church Records, he preferred this 
church. He worked with the senior pastor until 
1 64 1. Mr. Welde then went to England as colonial 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 21 

agent, where he lived until his death, which occurred 
in London, on March 23, 1661. 

Eliot's spirit was as gentle as Welde's was austere. 
In the Magnalia, we read from one who had a right 
to speak of Eliot these words by Cotton Mather: — 

He that will write of Eliot must write of his charity, or say 
nothing. His charity was a star of the first magnitude in the 
bright constellation of his virtues, and the rays of it were wonder- 
fully various and extensive. His liberality to pious uses, whether 
public or private, went much beyond the proportions of his little 
estate in this world. Many hundred pounds did he freely bestow 
upon the poor; and he would, with very forcible importunities, 
press his neighbor to join with him in such beneficences. . . . He 
did not put off his charity to be put in his last will, as many who 
therein show that their charity is against their will ; but he was 
his own administrator. He made his own hands his executors, 
and his own eyes his overseers. 

It is this spirit which the age most needed. It 
was happy for this church that, having Welde, it 
had Eliot. Yet we may see in Eliot's history how 
hard — yes, how almost imi^ossible it is — to rise 
far above one's age and its opinions. He opposed 
earnestly Mrs. Hutchinson and all her kind, and 
doubtless did not add to her comfort while staying 
in Roxbury. His faults do not seem to be his 
own, but rather to be thrust upon him. I am sure 
it was against his nature to pain by word or pen 
any human being. I do not think it was pleasant 



22 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

to him to make his disciplinary call upon Mrs. 
Hutchinson or write a severe letter against the 
Anabaptist. The first minister evidently enjoyed it. 
Eliot, wherever we see him, is moved by a spirit of 
humanity deep and tender as it was broad. 

The passion of his life was the good of his race. 
It was no narrow sympathy. As an educator he was 
foremost in every generous movement that has per- 
manently enriched the intellectual life of this town. 
In his last years a large grant of land was made by 
him to what is now the " Eliot School " in Jamaica 
l-*lain. Mather's words best show us the fervor of 
his interest in the establishment of schools: — 

It was his perpetual resolution and activity to support a good 
school in the town that belonged unto him. A grammar school he 
would always have upon the place, whatever it cost him ; and he 
importuned all other places to have the like. I cannot forget the 
ardor with which some heard him pray in a synod of these 
churches, which met at Boston to consider how the miscarriages 
which were among us might be prevented. I say with what fervor 
he uttered an expression to this purpose : " Lord, for schools every- 
where among us ! That our schools may flourish ! 'I'hat every 
member of this assembly may go home and procure a good school 
to be encouraged in the town in which he lives ! That, before we 
die, we may be so happy as to see a good school encouraged in 
every plantation of the country." God so blessed his endeavors 
that Roxbury could not live quietly without a free school in the 
town ; and the issue of it has been one thing which has almost 
made me put the title of Schola illustris upon that little nursery, — 
that is, that Roxbury has afforded more scholars, first for the 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 23 

college and then for the public, than any town of its bigness, or, 
if I mistake not, of twice its bigness in all New England. 

Of that wider interest which has made his name 
illustrious, but little can here be said. Most of us 
have long been familiar with at least the general 
outlines of his scheme to uplift the Indians; yet 
do any of us realize how patient, how brave, how 
unselfish a struggle it was ? His passion to civilize 
and Christianize this unhappy race was divine, his 
consecration to the cause so entire that no obstacle 
discouraged him or danger appalled. His own ease, 
money, life, were as nothing. Many times, he faced 
death with that quiet and fearless spirit which char- 
acterizes the truest courage that man can show. 
Far from home, alone among the savages, he is 
dangerously threatened by a chief. " I am engaged," 
he replies, "in the work of God; and God is with 
me. I fear not all the sachems in the country. I 
shall go on my way, and do you touch me if you 
dare." This is the man who fills his pockets with 
cakes and apples for the Indian children, when 
he sets forth upon his weekly visit to his larger 
parish. 

So filled was he with that last crowning gift of 
the Christian spirit, a loving charity, that in his 
last days he is possessed by it, when all other powers 
have failed him. " Alas ! " he says, " I have lost 
everything. My understanding fails me, my utter- 



24 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

ance fails me ; but, thank God, my charity holds out 
still. I find that rather grows than fails." 

The translation of the Bible into the Indian 
tongue is acknowledged by all scholars to have 
been an intellectual feat sufficient of itself to sig- 
nalize any one who achieved it. Cotton Mather 
believed that the devils could easily manage Greek 
and Latin, but gave up at once the speech of the 
native American. This work of Eliot drew from 
one of the most distinguished of European scholars 
words of most unqualified praise. A book which 
he was just publishing was dedicated to Eliot, the 
dedication containing these words: "To the very 
Rev. and pious John Eliot, the indefatigable and 
faithful minister and venerable apostle to the Indians 
in America, who has translated and published in the 
American tongue by an Atlean labor the Bible, and 
first preached the word of God to the Americans in 
the Indian tongue." 

See him upon one of his journeys through a 
country with no roads, to the " Nashaway " tribe 
in New Hampshire. This in early spring. The 
streams are high and swift. Yet he swims them 
upon his horse until it fails him, when he continues 
on foot. lie is wet to the skin day after day. 
Often, at night, he can light no fire ; but, as he halts 
for rest, he removes his boots to wring the water 
from his socks. He tells it all very simply, as if it 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 25 

were no great thing: "God stepped in and helped." 
He adds, " I considered that word of God, ' Endure 
hardness as a good soldier of Christ' " 

Note again, if we would see the spirit of the man, 
the kind and extent of opposition which he met with- 
out flinching. The merchants grew hostile, because 
he interfered with their Indian trade. The sympathy 
of the Court, given at first, was continually dying out, 
and leaving him with no support. The magistrates 
were several times so faithless both to the letter and 
spirit of their promises as to counteract some of his 
most cherished plans. Many of those who were at 
first advisers and friends cooled toward him, and 
withdrew their help. A trader could undo all his 
work for the week by sending a cask of spirits into 
the camp at Dorchester or Natick. He mounted 
his horse upon the following week with that unfalter- 
ing hope which only the divinest faith knows. 

Once among the Indians, his real difficulties 
began. The medicine-men hated him and his work, 
because it undermined their own. Secretly, they 
put all manner of obstacles in his way. Several 
of the chiefs would not tolerate his presence. But 
the coolness of friends, the sneers of enemies, 
the misrepresentations of traders, the withdrawal of 
help from Court and magistrates, seem never once 
to have shaken his faith m the worth and hopeful- 
ness of his endeavors. 



26 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

It was not a religious work alone that he strove 
to do. His aims were practical. He began with 
their nearest wants : if hungry, he brought bread ; 
if naked, he clothed them. The various uses of 
tools he eagerly strove to teach them, — the planting 
of trees, the rearing of vegetables and grains, the 
building of fences and houses with separate apart- 
ments. A meeting-house was to be within the fort, 
and also the school-house for the training of Indians 
who were themselves to become teachers to their 
own people. This was his plan for Natick. 

In some of the unpublished letters in the His- 
torical Rooms, Eliot writes to a London friend about 
the wants of his school : paper and ink-horns are 
wanted ; tools of all sorts are asked for. He 
promises to be discreet in giving them out. " I 
o-ive," he says, "small gifts, and these but seldom. 
What shall come to my hand of these tools I intend 
to keep in a common stock, to lend to one as well 
as another, that no man may sit idle or lose a day's 
work." 

We find Eliot not only preaching to them from 
Ezekiel an hour and a quarter, but carrying crow- 
bars, shovels, and tools of various descriptions, — not 
only making rules to help them conquer their sins, 
like gambling, drunkenness, and wife-beating, but 
instructing them even in their wigwams to partition 
off the space into rooms, that the first lessons of 



AIEMORIAL SERMONS. 2^ 

modesty may be taught. Great stress is laid upon 
cleanliness as next to godliness. The women are 
taught to spin, and tlie men to dig ditches and hew 
timber ; in the winter, to make brooms, baskets, and 
staves. 

It is indeed difficult to see what we have done 
more for the Indians after two and a quarter centu- 
ries than apply with varying success the spirit of 
Eliot's scheme. With all our experience, with all 
means and power at our command, we have done 
so little toward the solution of the problem as to 
make us wonder that he, at such a time and under 
such circumstances, did so much. 

Very modestly, he writes back to England about 
this work, not painting it in high colors, although 
he drew from England most of his pecuniary 
support. He says of his Indian converts, "We know 
the confession of very many of them is mere paint." 
He spoke of his work thus : " Also they have been 
poor and small doings, and 111 be the man that shall 
throw the first stone at them all." 

Mather says, in 1687, there were six New England 
churches of Indians, eighteen assemblies, twenty- 
four native preachers. All of which indicates the 
magnitude and promise of the work at that date. 

What might have come of it, had the work, as 
Eliot planned it, gone on in his own spirit } What, 
but for that most terrible event of those days, 
King Philip's war 1 



28 MEAIORJAI. SERMOiVS. 

There is pathos in those words quoted in 1S36, 
by Dr. Putnam, from one of Eliot's biographers : — 

In consequence of the excitement, the Court passed an order 
that tlie Indians at Natick be removed to Deer Ishmd. The 
Indians sadly but quietly submitted. Their spiritual father and 
ever faithful friend, Mr. Eliot, met them. 

That settlement toward which the heart of the good apostle 
had )earned alike through seasons of discouragement and of 
hope, the foundations of which were laid by his own hands and 
hallowed by his own prayers ; where the tree of life, as he 
believed, was firmly rooted in the wilderness; where, by the 
patient labor of years, he had made the word of God under- 
stood, and had reared civil and social institutions ; that settle- 
ment which, probably ne.xt to his own home, he loved better than 
anything else on earth,— is suddenly broken up, and its inhabi- 
tants are hurried away from their fields and homes, into what 
IS little better than an imprisonment. At the hour of their 
departure, the venerable man, on whose head more than seventy 
winters had shed their frosts, stands with them on the bank of 
the river to pour forth his prayers for them, to mingle his tears 
with theirs, and to teach them the lesson, not of resentment 
against man, but of submission to God,— the lesson of meekness 
and of strong endurance. 

We now look back to ask the question. What 
remains of his great endeavor.? The answer is 
that which must be made about a very large part 
of the world's most ideal devotion. Little remains 
of the work except the purpose and the spirit of it. 
But what after a few generations remains of any 
s])iritual work more than this.? The actual methods, 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 29 

the external means, change with each age: only the 
inner life and spirit abide. Would we to-day truly 
benefit that race which we have so profoundly 
wronged? We must go back and take up again 
the essential part of Eliot's plan. 

Even while Eliot worked, that other spirit wrought 
fiercely against the Indian. Eliot ojaposed it, as all 
true humanity opposes it to-day. It showed itself in 
high quarters then as it does to-day. The minister at 
North Hampton wrote to our Governor Dudley that 
the Indians should be considered thieves and mur- 
derers, and hunted with dogs, as they do bears. The 
Pequots by the same spirit were exterminated, after 
they had been conquered in honorable warfare. In 
Marblehead, the women who, coming from church, 
killed two Indians, were blessed and thanked for it. 
This was the age when Plymouth sent the severed 
hand of King Philip to Boston, and the clergy 
thanked God over the ghastly offering. 

Through a few other heai^ts like Eliot's, that 
other spirit promised by the Master was struggling 
to show itself. John Robinson had said, " Oh that 
they had converted some before they had killed 
them!" This last was Eliot's method. We still, if 
we would deal honorably or successfully with the 
Indians, have to take up again the spirit of the 
true apostle. 

Richard Baxter, the celebrated English clergyman, 



30 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

in a letter to Eliot a few years before his decease, 
thus expresses his opinion of his labors : " There is 
no man on earth whose work I consider more hon- 
orable than yours. The industry of the Jesuits and 
friars, and their successes in Congo, Japan, and 
China, shame us all, save you." 

An old tradition says, " As long as Eliot is alive, 
the country can never perish." It would be true 
always that, as long as such a spirit was kept alive 
by the fidelity of a few such men as he, no noble 
cause could die. When he considered that he could 
no longer do duty for the parish on account of 
extreme feebleness, he could not rest without 
helping some one, believing as he did that the little 
power that was left was sacred for such uses as 
it might serve. He therefore urged the families 
within two or three miles of the house to send 
their negro servants to be taught by him. After 
he could not leave his house, he undertook the 
teaching of a child that had lost its sight, spending 
thus many hours each week in filling the child's 
mind with the finest Scripture passages. 

During a larger part of his long ministry, nearly 
sixty years, he had the help first of Mr. Welde, until 
1 64 1, then of two colleagues, — Samuel Danforth, 
who was ordained in 1650, and labored until his 
death in 1674. Nehemiah Walter did not come 
until 1688, when Eliot was eighty-four years of age. 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 31 

With all his more distant and exhaustive duties, 
never is there a sign of any neglect of the common 
parish work. We might apply to him, in his fidelity 
to these nearer and humbler duties, Chaucer's well- 
known lines in his Canterbury Tales: — 

" A clerk 
That Christ's pure gospel would sincerely preach 
And his parishioners devoutly teach. 
Benign he was, and wondrous diligent, 
And in adversity full patient. 
Wide was his cure, the houses far asunder ; 
Yet never failed he, nor for rain or thunder. 
In sickness or mishap to visit all. 
The furthest in his parish, great and small. 
This noble example to his flock he gave. 
That first he wrought and afterwards he taught." 

The good man now thought himself a cumberer 
of the ground, and longed for the great rest of the 
other life, — the rest which he had so well earned. 
He died peacefully in 1690. His remains were 
placed in what is now the parish tomb, in the old 
burial-ground at the corner of Washington and 
Eustis Streets. 

Mr. Eliot left behind him four sons, who were 
graduated at Cambridge, and became ministers. It 
is said that he met all their college expenses. It 
passes the understanding to know how; for he 
had at most but little money, and he seems to 
have given that broadcast in charity. 



32 AIEMORIAL SERMONS. 

This sacred memory should never be recalled in 
this pulpit without a word of tribute to the wife 
who seems in all things to have been worthy of 
the husband. Skilled in the virtues of the home, 
mistress of all its needs, she was ever at the service 
of the poor and sick. Her prudence is always 
spoken of, and it was needed. We cannot help 
wondering how she met her husband when he 
returned empty-handed from the treasurer's, because 
he could not loose the knots of the handkerchief 
that held the quarter's salary, and thus gave it all to 
the sick woman. If she rei)roached him, we may 
be sure it was in gentleness ; for the poor loved her 
too. When accidents befell or sickness came, it was 
to her that they often sent. Her skill was as apt 
as it was ready for all needs. 

It is a touching scene when the husband stands 
over the cofifin after her death in her eighty-fourth 
year to tell the throng of people of her virtues and 
her worth. 

Of these lives so at one in every act that was 
beautiful with the Christ spirit, we may use in 
closing those words of the Master whom they so 
nobly served. The words stand at the beginning 
of Mather's Life of Eliot. They may as fitly speak 
to us from its close: "Blessed is that servant whom 
his Lord when he cometh shall find so doincr." 



SERVICES UPON THE SECOND SUNDAY. 



April 2, 1882. 



ORGAN VOLUNTARY. 



ANTHEM. 



READING OF SCRIPTURE. 



Psalm i2[. 



The Tune "York,'* from Rev. John Tufts' book, 1714. The first music in parts published 
New England. 



i 



gipg 



^ 



2^^:S 



d=^ 



i 



^_l zsa 



1. I lift my Eyes up to the Hills : || From whence should come my help ? || 

2. My help's from the Etern.^l God, || who made the heav'ns and earth. {| 

3. He will not let thy foot be mov'd ; || thy keeper slumbers not. || 

4. Lo, He that keepeth Israel; || He slumbers not, nor sleeps. || 

5. Th' Eternal God is He who is | thy watchful Keeper still ; Th' 

Eternal God becomes thy shade : || at thy right hand He stands. || 

6. The Sun shall not smite thee by Day ; | nor shall the Moon by Night. i| 

7. Th' Eternal keeps thee from all ill ; || He shall preserve thy soul. || 

8. Th' Eternal keeps thy going out ; || and keeps thy coming in ; || He 

does it from this time, and will 11 do it forevermore. 11 



From Mallier's Psalteriu 



i7iS. 



PRAYER. 



36 



SEH VICES. 



Psalm 145. 

Words as used in 1630. Tune : St. Anns, 1687, 



Here will I laud my ("rod and King, 
And bless thy name for aye ; 
Forever will I praise thy name, 
And bless thee day by day. 



I of thy glorious majesty 
The beauty will record, 
And meditate upon thy works, 
Most wonderful O Lord. 



Great is the Lord most worthy praise And they shall of thy power and of 

His greatness none can reach. Thy fearful acts declare ; 

From race to race they shall thy works And I to publish all abroad. 

Praise, and thy power preach. Thy greatness will not spare. 



ADDRESS, 

I5V THE iMl.NTSTMR, RliV. J. G. BRUOKS. 



My Country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, — 

Of thee I sing: 
Land where my fathers died. 
Land of the Pilgrim's pride. 
From every mountain side 

Let freedom ring; 



My native country, thee, — 
Land of the noble free, — 

Thy name I love : 
I love thy rocks and rills, 
Thy woods and templed hills ; 
My heart with rapture thrills 

Like that above. 



Our fathers' God, to thee, 
Author of liberty, — 

To thee we sing : 
Long may our land be bright 
With freedom's holy light; 
Protect us by thy might, 

Great God, our King. 



BENEDICTION. 



SECOND SERMON, APRIL 2. 



After Mr. Welde's return to England in 1641, Mr. 
Eliot was alone until 1650. The work among the 
Indians made the help of a colleague necessary, and 
Samuel Danforth, a student from Cambridge, was 
called. Cotton Mather tells us that Mr. Danforth's 
father was an English gentleman of estate and in- 
fluence. He came to America because driven to 
desperation by the English Church. Mr. Danforth 
was graduated in 1643, became an instructor in the 
college, and later a member of the corporation. 
Several descriptions of him as a preacher remain. 
All speak of him as mighty in the Scriptures, which 
means that he used them skilfully and freely iu his 
discourses. He was a student of science, especially 
of that which has been called the divine science, — 
astronomy. He made calculations for almanacs. 
He loved to illustrate God's power from the stars. 
A comet gave him occasion for a great effort ; and, 
if any special sins were rife, the heavenly phe- 
nomenon became in his hands a kind of divine ven- 
geance. He is called both poet and mathematician. 
Two of his sons became ministers, — one at Dorches- 



38 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

ter, one at Taunton. There are direct descendants 
from him now in our parish. One evidence of his 
strength is the effort made to call him away to 
other fields of work. He remained faithful ever to 
the plainer duties of a pastors life until his death 
in 1674, after a ministry of twenty-four years. But a 
few days after his death, the society gathered in the 
second meeting-house. Our church record contains 
in Eliot's hand these words: " My brother Danforth 
made the most glorious end that I ever saw." These 
further entries are also given : — 

[1674] ij'i 9"' we first met & worshiped God in o' new meeting 
house, but the I'd touched o'' thigh because yesterday my bro. 
Danforth fell sick. 

19. 9"\ My bro. Danforth dyed in the Lord, it pleased the 
Lord to brighten his passage to glory, he greatly increased in 
the pow of his ministry, especially ye last sumer. he cordially 
joyned w'h me in maintaining the peace of the church, we con- 
sulted about the beautifying the house of God w''' ruling elders, 
and to order the congregation into the primitive way of Collec- 
tions. 

22 9'". a good Sab : & sac: blessed be the Lord, but sorrow- 
full, because o^ resp'ed Pasto"' was dead. 

Eliot is again left alone fourteen years until 168S, 
when Nehemiah Walter was called. He was born 
in Ireland. His father came, as Eliot and Welde 
had come, because non-conformity to the Established 
Church made him uncomfortable. He is the scholar 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 



39 



of our line of ministers. He had a certain elegant 
ease in speaking and writing both French and Latin, 
which distinguished him when a young man. He 
became a critical student of Hebrew and Greek, and 
an authority among our American scholars upon 
Church History 

Materials about his life are very scanty. The best 
account of him, in his connection with the Church, 
is in Mr. Dillaway's History of the Grammar 
School in Roxbury, from which I take at length 
the following: — 

The good old minister was so charmed with the young preacher 
that, on the first day of hearing him, he requested members of 
the church to stop after the evening service, and was for putting 
it to vote whether they would give him a call. But the Hon. 
Joseph Dudley, afterwards Governor, notwithstanding he enter- 
tained a high opinion of Mr. Walter, thought so sudden a decision 
inexpedient, and persuaded Mr. Eliot to defer it for a while. After 
a short delay, a call was unanimously given, the brethren of the 
church making their choice on Sunday, July 15, 1688, and the 
inhabitants of the town in public assembly, on Sunday Sep- 
tember 9, approving and confirming it. 

On Wednesday, Oct. 17, 1688, Mr. Walter was ordained, and 
preached the sermon himself, as was the custom at that time. Mr. 
Eliot, then in his eighty-fourth year, presided at the ordination, 
and gave the charge. When two ministers were settled over the 
same church, it was usual to call one pastor and the other 
teacher; but Mr. Eliot gave both these names to his colleague, 
and on his return from the ordination pleasantly said to Mr. 
Walter, " Brother, I have ordained you a teaching pastor, but 
don't be proud of it, for I always ordain my Indians so." 



40 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

Throughout their joint ministry the relation was like that 
between father and son. Cotton Mather, in his Memoir of Eliot, 
says, " The good old man, like Aaron, as it were, disrobed 
himself with an unspeakable satisfaction when he beheld his 
garments spread upon a son so dear to him." . . . 

In 17 17, Mr. Walter's health began to be affected by his minis- 
terial labors. ... As an evidence of the importance attached to his 
services by his parishioners and others, it is stated that the occa- 
sion of his ceasing to preach was observed as a day of fasting 
and prayer, not only by his own flock, but by the ministers and 
people of the vicinity. In a few months, he was able to resume 
his labors, and continued them without assistance till Oct. 19, 
1 7 18, when his son, Thomas Walter, was ordained his colleague. 
This connection, unfortunately, was of short duration, being 
broken by the early death of the junior pastor. 

The whole weight of the pastoral office again devolving upon 
the senior, his people, in consideration of his advanced age, 
and their great desire to retain his services as long as possible, 
relieved him from half of each Sunday's service by supplying the 
pulpit at their own expense when he did not preach. 

Among his parishioners and warm friends was his Excellency 
Governor Dudley, who on many occasions bore testimony to the 
high estimation in which he held his minister. There was also 
the Governor's son, the Hon. Paul Dudley, for many years one 
of his Majesty's Council and Chief Justice of the Province, whose 
respect for Mr. Walter fully equalled, if it did not exceed, that of 
his father. Rev. Dr. Eliot, in his biography of Mr. Walter, says : 
" His discourses were always studied, and he delivered them with 
great animation, though with a feeble voice. He had a delicate 
bodily frame, and was small of stature.'' Rev. Dr. Chauncy 
regarded him as one of the most brilliant of our countrymen. 

On the 25th of December, 1749, he was confined to his house 
by bodily indisposition, which gradually increased upon him, and 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 41 

terminated in his decease, Sept. 17, 1759, in the eighty-seventh 
year of his age. His ministry and that of Mr. EUot occupied 
a space of nearly one hundred and twenty years. 

In 1750, Oliver Peabody was settled, two months 
after Mr. Walter's death. His ministry was but a 
year and a half. Nothing remains especially worthy 
of note of this short period. A sermon of Dr. 
Porter's has these words : " Even while Mr. Walter 
was living, Mr. Oliver Peabody, a young gentleman 
of acknowledged abilities and unimpeachable char- 
acter, was invited to settle as colleague pastor. 
Short however was his ministry, short his life." 

The predecessor of Dr. Porter, Amos Adams, 
was graduated from Cambridge in the year that 
Mr. Peabody died. In the following year, he was 
ordained. Several published sermons show him to 
have been so outspoken against the people's sins 
that we see some ground of the frequent complaint 
against his ministry. It may, indeed, have been one 
reason why they thought his sermons too long. To 
speak with such pitiless directness against each 
human sin must occasionally make the hearer feel 
that the preacher is unpleasantly personal. 

He lived in the midst of those troublous times 
that brought in the Revolution. From the first, he 
gave himself to the cause. He preached for it, and 
wrote for it. He considered all soldiers quartered 
in the neighborhood his parishioners, and visited 



42 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

them when sick, preaching to them when he could 
get them together. When the ministers met at 
Watertown to recommend the people to arm them- 
selves, he was chosen scribe, which was a place of 
honor. 

He fell a martyr to the cause as truly as if he 
had died in battle. He had done his work for the 
day here, and went fatigued to preach in the camp 
to the soldiers. The exposure cost him his life. 
Mr. Drake has printed in his admirable History the 
obituary notice from the Boston Gazette. It stands 
thus : — 

He spent his time and strength with pleasure in the service of 
a grateful people, till, by the distress of the times, they were 
dispersed, and he himself obliged to leave his habitation and 
pulpit, from which time his labors were increased ; but, through an 
affection to the people of his charge, he went through them with 
cheerfulness, attending the small remainder of his flock ever\' 
Sunday, though his family was removed to a distance among his 
friends. At the time he was seized with his last sickness, he was 
engaged as chaplain to a regiment in the Continental army, who 
paid the funeral honors to his remains on the following Saturday. 

The church was now for seven years without a 
pastor. Mr. Adams died in 1775. Eliphalet Porter 
was settled in 1782. Not popular as a preacher, he 
yet possessed such valued gifts of sober common 
sense as to make his counsel prized in all practical 
difificulties. Beneath a gravity almost severe there 



MEMORIAL SERMOXS. 43 

was a vein of humor that did not fail him in any 
emergency. Dr. Putnam, who was thrown into the 
closest personal relations with him, spoke the follow- 
ing words in a sermon delivered here almost fifty 
years ago : — 

Indeed, Dr. Porter's was a mind that seemed never to have 
been swayed or misled by any passion. Never was man farther 
from being the creature of passion ; and this great circumstance, 
in connection with his clear and far-sighted understanding, is that 
which, while it precluded all brilliancy of mind, stamped him 
for a man of uncommon prudence and wisdom, and unexception- 
able purity and probity of character, and made his life a most 
uniform and tranquil one. Had he a single enemy in the world, 
that enemy might almost be challenged to adduce one instance 
of moral or social wrong, or even of imprudence or folly. Never 
had enemy less power 10 do harm to a character. He was a 
friend to the whole family of man, and no degree of sin or folly 
could place' a fellow-creature beyond the bounds of his charity 
and benevolent regards. He was a willing and faithful counsellor 
to all who sought his counsel, and to all with whom he felt suffi- 
ciently intimate to authorize his offering it. And his was advice 
which it seemed always safe to follow, and which it was seldom 
well to disregard. Even men near him in age were fain to 
receive it and be guided by it. If he stood not high among the 
praised, he was certainly pre-eminent among the trusted. Of his 
private and domestic character, I could speak that which I do 
know and testify that which I have seen ; and I should rejoice 
to set it before his people as a model of an equable temper 
and of unfailing and affectionate kindness, securing a beautiful 
domestic harmony and happiness. 

The University, to which he was elected Fellow 



44 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

in 1 8 18, paid a high tribute to his " fidelity, intelli- 
gence, and zeal" in meeting all duties of the office. 

Under Dr. Porter our church became Unitarian. 
The movement had been growing for a generation. 
We have to look to England for its immediate 
influences on us. Theophilus Lindsey gave up his 
vicarage in England in 1773 for the new truth, and 
sold his library for money to get to London. There 
was no pulpit then to receive him. He hired an 
auction room off the .Strand, and opened the first 
Unitarian chapel. It was then a crime punishable 
by law to deny the Trinity. He faced many dangers, 
but worked on twenty years, gathering about him 
leading lawyers, members of Parliament, and men of 
scientific fame. He died two years after Dr. Porter 
preached his first sermon. 

Another far greater name now appears, Joseph 
Priestly. Franklin met him in London, to become 
his enthusiastic admirer. The University of Edin- 
burgh had given Priestly an honorary degree for his 
high attainments. He now became a pronounced 
Unitarian, and so hated was his faith that his house 
was burned in Birmingham in 1791. His meeting- 
house was also destroyed. He fled for his life to 
London, where the feeling was so strong against 
him that his own sons could not get positions 
because they bore the name of Priestly. He came 
to America, and died here in the year when this 
present building was erected. 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 45 

Dr. Porter must have read eagerly the books of 
both these English leaders. Freeman indeed told 
Lindsey that in Boston all the ministers were 
reading their books. From the time that Dr. Porter 
declared his sympathy with a larger faith, for nearly 
thirty years, the name Unitarian was slowly strug- 
gling into life. Like most party names, it was 
given by an enemy, but finally accepted and gloried 
in, as the word "Christian" was by the early disci- 
ples. Channing did not define the principles of 
the name Unitarian until 18 19, when he preached 
his great sermon at Jared Sparks's ordination in 
Baltimore. In 1787, five years after Dr. Porter's 
settlement, Mr. Freeman was made minister of 
King's Chapel by the congregation ; for he was, 
like President Kirkland and Ware, known to be 
such a liberal that the bishop would not ordain him. 

There was that in the Prayer Book which in 
honesty he could not read. He let his people know 
of his doubt; and they authorized him to "purge it," 
which he did. Few things more strikingly show 
how far the movement had reached than this unity 
of action between people and pastor of Iving's 
Chapel. What the dignitaries of the Church dared 
not do the people rejoiced to do. Still, Unitarianism 
was not an open and recognized power to be dealt 
with until the appointment of Henry Ware to the 
Cambridge Professorship. His faith was widely 



46 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

known, and the very fact that he could receive 
such an office showed clearly that the college was 
won. This, too, was a signal for more vigorous 
organized opposition to the new heresy. A church 
was built in Boston ; and a strong man called to be 
its minister, that the danger might be met upon its 
own ground. These are the days when it was asked 
contemptuously, "Are you of the Boston Religion 
or the Christian Religion } " It was asked in return, 
in a notable pamphlet by John Lowell, " Are you a 
Christian or a Calvinist .? " 

It was in 1810 that Dr. Porter preached that 
sermon before the ministers which settled all ques- 
tions about the destiny of this church. To him, the 
New Testament asked but the simplest faith, — only 
this, " Jesus was the Christ." This, although it 
have for us little definite satisfaction, was most 
effectively used by Thatcher in his famous argu- 
ments against Andover. 

We should be grateful even now that the manly 
independence of Dr. Porter brought this church 
through those stormy times to that truer faith in 
which we so freely rejoice. 

There have been many differing talents in this 
ministerial succession. Welde stands for active 
zeal, Eliot for a philanthropy that has in it the 
tenderness of his Master, Nehemiah Walter was 
the scholar, Adams the patriot, Putnam the orator. 



MEAIORTAL SERMONS. 47 

Of Dr. Putnam's ministry, that began in 1830 and 
closed in 1878, almost a half-century's duration, I 
need say little. To many of you, it is a thing of but 
yesterday. It is almost a daily occurrence to hear 
from some former parishioner, who comes back after 
years of absence, another of those familiar and char- 
acteristic illustrations of his genius as a preacher. 
Hundreds of times we have all heard it. One 
example which was given me within a few days may 
stand for all : " Thirty-two years ago, I heard him 
preach upon this text; and this was his thought." 
Both were then given, as if they had been just com- 
mitted to memory. Almost as often, I have heard 
repeated words which he spoke, — not in public, but 
in private, — when some new experience that was 
bright or sad called out his sympathy. Word for 
word, they were treasured. 

Surely, it was rare seed that could thus grow, not 
only in prepared and willing soil, but in all soils, — in 
the heart that was young and in the heart that was 
old, in the heart that was careless, worldly, and in- 
different, in the heart that was uplifted and in the 
heart that was cast down. His was the gift of so 
speaking the word that its higher, secret meaning 
was revealed to the heart of the hearer. The mind 
thus surprised felt its worth, and cherished it in the 
memory. 

As I promised last Sunday, I will now recall some 



48 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

features of that earlier church life and history with 
which my older hearers are quite familiar, either 
through books or memory. We are helped to see 
how great the change has been, and, on the whole, 
how great for good. The average life is longer and 
more secure from many diseases before which our 
forefathers were helpless. There is a wider and 
kinder charity now. If any present Boston minister 
were to write in such spirit as some of the leading 
ones then wrote against their fellow-men, we should 
pronounce him insane or unfit for such a calling. 

The road from Roxbury to Boston was not always 
safe from footpads. Tramps of the worst descrip- 
tion were so common as to be a great vexation. 
Drunkenness was not only more frequent in propor- 
tion to the population, but of a type more riotous 
and vulgar. I think it would be difficult to show 
that any of the vices were less frequent then than 
now, even that of dishonesty. 

As we read their story told in their private diaries 
and in their church records, we see upon almost 
every page their belief in Special Providences in a 
way which affects all their life and thought. Few 
things better mark the change of thought from that 
day to this. A sudden death, a new form of dis- 
ease, a killing frost or wasting storm, an epidemic, 
an eclipse or comet, — each is certain to be construed 
into a sign of the divine anger. 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 49 

Yet their mistake was not that they saw too much 
of the Divine Power. It was that they saw him 
chiefly in what was strange and exceptional. We 
have learned at last that His power works only 
through law. There is no law of matter or of mind 
that is a divine promise to man. To break even the 
least of these laws would be like a breaking of his 
word. 

We have come thus to see the power in common 
and usual things as much as in the startling and 
unexpected. Many of our fears have vanished. 
Our trust in the universe has deepened. We no 
longer see the wrath of God in accident or flood. 
They are rather signs that we are to work more 
wisely to know and obey the divine ways. 

An account written in 1652, twenty years after 
the founding of the church, has these words about 
Roxbury and the church: "Their streets are large 
and some fayre houses. Yet they have built their 
house for church assembly destitute and unbeauti- 
fied." This unnatural simplicity has its explanation 
in the hatred of all that was popish. King James 
said to a Puritan divine, " Do you go barefoot, 
because the papists wear shoes and stockings .'' " 
Prayer was forbidden at burials, as it bore too close 
a likeness to the Catholic prayer for the dead. Only 
a magistrate could officiate at marriages. No ring 
could be used That, too, had a suggestion of 



so MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

popery. Many of the peculiarities of our cliurches 
and our worship to-day would have horrified them, 
— the cross upon so many of our steeples, our instru- 
mental music, stained glass, reading Scriptures with- 
out comment, responsive reading of Psalms, and 
even the repeating of the Lord's Prayer together. 
Our theology itself has hardly more changed than 
has our feeling toward the accessories and the forms 
of worship. 

The building of those earliest worshippers was 
roofed with straw. Neither clapboard nor plaster 
to keep out the cold; no galleries, no spire; and 
for seats only rude benches placed here and there. 
In some towns the congregation is called together 
by the beat of the drum or by the blowing of a 
horn or shell; sometimes, even, by the display of 
a red flag. An armed sentry stands at the door, 
to whom the men give their arms as they pass in. 
The church is but dimly lighted. Sometimes, oiled 
paper is used instead of glass. The stocks are so 
near that the boys, as they pass in, can "shy a stone" 
at the poor wretch who is held in its clutches, or 
they may fling only a taunt to remind him of his 
sin. The whipping-post is near by, also the wooden 
cage in which, among others, those are placed who 
remain away from church without good excuse for 
more than a month. 

The people, once within the church, are seated 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 51 

according to rank and condition, the old men near 
the pulpit, the women upon one side, the men upon 
the other. The wives of magistrates are honored 
with a special seat ; while the boys are thrust into a 
corner later into the gallery, where they are guarded 
by constables, armed with sticks tipped at one end 
with hair. The hardened end is for the boys, if 
rude or if they fall asleep; the softer end, for the 
girls, if they are inattentive. The Governor enters, 
preceded by four vergers bearing halberds. 

The minister comes, wearing cap and cloak. His 
black gloves are slit at the thumb and forefinger, 
that he may the more easily turn his manuscript. 
His prayer is an hour long; his sennon often 
more. An hour-glass is at hand to mark the time. 
When the sermon is finished, some one may put 
a hard cjuestion to the elders, or some new law or 
the banns of marriage may be read. After the 
deacon has said solemnly, " Wherefore, as God hath 
prospered you, so freely give," the congregation 
comes forward to deposit the money for contribu- 
tion. 

In painful publicity may be seated, where all can 
see, some offender against the public moral sense, 
a large red letter upon the breast to tell the sin that 
must be thus terribly proclaimed. 

The singing is done by the congregation. One or 
two lines are first read in a loud voice, then repeated 



52 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

by the singers. Many of them knew but five or six 
tunes. The hymns are from the Bay Psalm Book, 
to which Mr. Welde and Mr. Eliot so largely con- 
tributed. We have among our worshippers still one 
who sang in the choir sixty-nine years ago. Another 
of the oldest living members has told me that the 
singing before this building was erected, — for her 
memory is distinct beyond the days when the society 
worshipped in what is now St. Luke's Home, — that 
the singing by the congregation was very hard to 
listen to, for every one sang as he saw fit. 

Before the Revolution, Tate and Brady's Hymn 
Book was introduced. One of the present con- 
gregation once strongly objected to these hymns, 
because of their religious "fogyism." It recalled by 
very contrast the time when the people here were so 
offended at the dangerous newness of the Tate and 
Brady Collection. Indeed, it is difficult to find a 
single change in this long history that was not re- 
sisted with more or less violence, often with an inten- 
sity of feeling difficult to understand ; for example, 
"the pueing of the meeting-house in 1693," and Rev. 
Thomas Walter's attempt to harmonize the singing. 
He writes about it plainly: "It sounded like five 
hundred tunes roared out at different times." Both 
these attempts are strongly withstood. Every sep- 
arate change in the choir, especially the introduction 
of instruments, even the tuninsr-fork, creates bitter- 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 53 

ness of feeling. Many times, tlie older people leave 
the church in indignation. Ebenezer Fox says: "I 
very well remember the first Sabbath that the bass- 
viol was used as an accompaniment to the singing. 
The old pious people were horror-struck at what 
they considered a sacrilegious innovation, and went 
out of the meeting in high dudgeon." The organ 
when introduced was quite as seriously opposed. 

The dress of many of the congregation was a 
source of painful offence to Mr. Eliot. The broad 
belts, ruffs, and high boots of the young men ; the 
hoods and scarfs of the young women ; the wide 
sleeves, "slack apparel," and "immoderate great 
vayles," together with the growing lust for wigs, 
— gave the apostle occasion to utter frecjuent and 
indignant protests against such deceitful and wicked 
usages. But we read that the ministers were help- 
less before this pleasant sin, chiefly because their 
own wives were forward in such extravagances. 

Over the minister's study door was sometimes 
written for his parishioners the warning words, " Be 
short." It did not fail to give rise to frequent witti- 
cisms at the pastor's expense, as he did not in his 
preaching quite practise his own text. But, when 
we read the record of his duties, we forgive him 
almost any method of saving time. It was a serious 
and most busy life. The week was portioned out to 
special duties. Four or five entire afternoons were 



54 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

assigned to visits, at which all the children must be 
present to undergo an examination in the Catechism. 
The family was forewarned, and knew the hour of 
the minister's coming. Even the servants must be 
present The minister must search out the special 
offender in the community, and labor with him as if 
the minister alone were to be held responsible for 
the offence. 

He was a kind of confessor, too, not only of all 
vices and crimes, but oftener must he listen to inter- 
minable tales of dreams, visions, diseased and morbid 
fancies, theological doubts, all of which he was ex- 
pected to allay, at least to give them patient and 
sympathetic hearing. 

His own soul, too, must be closely watched. One 
day in the week, he must meditate upon his own 
temptations and sins, and set apart a period of prayer 
for himself, another day for his family, another for 
his enemies, one for all churches, one for the sorrow- 
ing. A full and toilsome life, yet not without its 
gayety, its jests, its gladness. In some of the old 
records, after a tale of hardship and trouble, are 
added these words, " We were yet very happy in 
those days." 

The spot upon which the church stands, together 
with the grounds round about it, has an unusual 
interest. It is often asked if this building is upon 
the site of the old ones. The records show that, 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 



55 



upon the building of tlie second house, it was voted 
that its erection be " as near the other as conven- 
iently may be." The first building (1632) stood 
forty-two years. The Brookline people paid one- 
fifth of the expenses, which shows their proportion 
among our worshippers. The second building stood 
sixty-seven years. The third was burned, according 
to the records, by a foot-stove. The fourth was 
built, in 1746, so like the previous one that by the 
plan of the last we can easily imagine ourselves far 
back into the preceding century. One of the oldest 
parishioners remembers vividly the entrance door 
upon the south side. The pulpit was opposite, upon 
the north. A liberal number of free seats were 
directly before the pulpit. Upon the right of the 
old pulpit was first the minister's pew, then Paul 
Dudley's, then Colonel Lamb's, Ralph Holbrook's, 
Jonathan Seaver's, Joseph Warren's, and John 
Williams'. Upon the right of the door leading 
to the gallery sat J. Ruggles, Ebenezer Crafts, 
Mrs. Dorothy Williams. Other names are John 
Bowles, Ebenezer Seaver, Joseph Heath, Isaac 
Curtis, Kbenezer May. 

Strong opposition was shown to the building of 
the present church, as being too extravagant and 
fashionable. Five buildings have stood here. The 
one before this was sadly shattered by the cannon 
of the enemy during the siege of Boston. White- 



56 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

field addressed a vast gathering of people in front 
of the church. This hill was often the camp ground 
of our forces in the great days of the Revolution. 
Here, often was Washington. Here, the right wing 
of the army was inspected by Greene and Thomas. 
The latter held his head-quarters in Mr. Dillaway's 
house. 

Indeed, men whose names we connect with the 
great moments in history have walked here and 
known the spot well: Thomas Dudley, who was a 
captain at the siege of Amiens with Henry of 
Navarre ; men who were officers under Cromwell in 
that most unselfish Revolution in English history ; 
Lafayette and officers who fell beneath the guillo- 
tine in the bloody days of the reign of terror. 

Indeed, when we look back upon all that connects 
itself with this spot, we feel ourselves a part of what 
has been greatest in human effort. It lies now so 
far away from us that it is beginning to clothe itself 
in a romantic light. Its sacrifices and its heroisms, 
its struggles and its defeats, even its crimes, stand 
out upon that far background in shapes that will 
some day lend themselves to uses as dramatic as 
much ancient story that has inspired the epics of 
the world. We are still a little too near to feel its 
deeper meaning : — 

" Mut 'tis ever thus. What's within our ken. 
Owl-like, we blink at, and direct our search 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 57 

To farthest Inde in quest of novelties. 
While liere at home, upon our very thresholds, 
Ten thousand objects hurtle into view 
Of int'rest wonderful." 

I wisli, in closing this retfospect, to ask if it fur- 
nishes any evidence of the decay of the Christian 
Church. Two hundred and fifty years must have 
a story to tell, from which something of hope or 
despair may be drawn. We look back from the 
present to the past, from the Christian Church as it 
now is to the Church as it was. Are these churches 
to-day doing better work for the world 1 Is the 
cause we are helping a failing one } 

An English historian who has left the Church, and 
is its critic now, says, " There never was a time in 
our history when the Church was doing more for the 
good of England than to-day." If this is true, then 
the real power of the Church as a spiritual agent is a 
growing, not a failing cause. It is, I think, of exceed- 
ing importance that we have a right opinion about 
this; for we lose heart when that for which we toil 
is slowly losing ground. We are encouraged when 
we have reason to believe that our cause is strength- 
ening, though it be as slowly as the continents take 
shape. We feel ourselves working for a reality in 
God's universe, if His power seems to be on our side. 

We have a simple question to ask. Are the 
churches to-day — as compared with those in the 



58 MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

times that we have been considering — doing more 
for the actual needs of man ? In proportion to 
the population, are they doing it now in America? 
Are their charities better directed, their energies of 
prayer, praise, and worship more helpfully and wisely 
guided to practical ends? A volume of old sermons, 
any of those fierce discussions which, according to 
Bancroft, interfered so seriously with most important 
social interests, shows, at least, that the practical 
element is now considered far more than by our 
ancestors. Let aiiy one look at the long list of 
charities, temperance organizations, libraries, reading- 
rooms, which have sprung by thousands directly 
from the modern Church, and arc to-day supported 
by them in our great cities, and he can hardly doubt 
the essential progress of the Church. It no longer 
holds a monopoly of good works; but, in jiroportion 
to the population, it does more of this work than 
ever before. 

I only seek to show here that our doubts about 
the work of the Church are only what every genera- 
tion has in its turn felt. They are, however, doubts 
that spring from the very nature of religious work, 
and prove nothing against its value. 

In one of the first conversations that I ever had 
with Dr. Putnam, he said in some sadness, "I think 
the churches are in a bad way." Then, with a smile, 
he said, as in self-correction, " But I remember that. 



MEMORIAL SERMONS. 59 

a half-century ago, Dr. Porter thought that too." 
It is only this kind of opinion that I shall here 
offer. As I read this church history, I tried to find 
such evidences as these of what from generation 
to generation here in New England they thought 
about the prospects of the Church. Very early, 
Cotton left on record his despair for the Church. 
Eliot says, " I know not what is to become of the 
Church." Dutch travellers here in 1679 speak of 
him as the best minister, and add, " He deplored the 
decline of the Church in New England, and espe- 
cially in Boston, so that he did not knoA' what 
would be the final result." 

In the next generation. Cotton Mather was so 
disheartened that he wrote several times to this 
effect : " All looks to me as if the Church would 
be overcome, so much vice and wickedness and 
doubt and indifference prevail among us." This 
way of speaking was not confined to the first two 
or three generations. Mr. Walter here found the 
same dark outlook; and Amos Adams, whatever he 
felt, had more reasons in this church to make him 
discouraged than any predecessor. If Dr. Porter 
could at the close of his life so speak to Dr. Putnam, 
he had far greater reason to be disheartened when 
he took up the work here. It is doubtful if ever 
in the history of this church was there greater 
indifference about the real objects for which the 



6o MEMORIAL SERMONS. 

Church exists than then. A half-century ago, it was 
thought by many that the Roxbury churches were 
dying out for lack of attendance upon worship. 
We find thus the history of discouragement to be 
unbroken. 

Do we find it strange that each age should feel 
these discouragements } Not when we realize what 
the higher work of the Church is. The Church 
stands always for man's ideals, — for his ideals of 
hopj and trust, and for his ideals of conduct and 
endeavor. To realize these ideals even a little is 
always hard, and must always be attended by dis- 
couragements. We as individuals have an endless 
struggle to keep that which is highest in us alive, 
and are often saddened by our failures. The Church 
has the same endless struggle to keep its ideas for 
the community alive, and will always have to feel 
how far short it falls of the perfect work. Yet the 
work has been a blessed one; it has been a blessed 
work here, — so blessed that the history of this 
society is the history of whatever has grown to be 
best and most valued in this community. 



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